and sees all and hears all, you are not ashamed of thinking such things and doing such things, ignorant as you are of your own nature and subject to the anger of God.  Then why do we fear when we are sending a young man from the school into active life, lest he should do anything improperly, eat improperly, have improper intercourse with women; and lest the rags in which he is wrapped should debase him, lest fine garments should make him proud.  This youth (if he acts thus) does not know his own God; he knows not with whom he sets out (into the world).  But can we endure when he says, “I wish I had you (God) with me.”  Have you not God with you? and do you seek for any other when you have him? or will God tell you anything else than this?  If you were a statue of Phidias, either Athena or Zeus, you would think both of yourself and of the artist, and if you had any understanding (power of perception) you would try to do nothing unworthy of him who made you or of yourself, and try not to appear in an unbecoming dress (attitude) to those who look upon you.  But now because Zeus has made you, for this reason do you care not how you shall appear?  And yet is the artist (in the one case) like the artist in the other? or the work in the one case like the other?  And what work of an artist, for instance, has in itself the faculties, which the artist shows in making it?  Is it not marble or bronze, or gold or ivory? and the Athena of Phidias, when she has once extended the hand and received in it the figure of Victory, stands in that attitude for ever.  But the works of God have power of motion, they breathe, they have the faculty of using the appearances of things and the power of examining them.  Being the work of such an artist do you dishonor him?  And what shall I say, not only that he made you, but also entrusted you to yourself and made you a deposit to yourself?  Will you not think of this too, but do you also dishonor your guardianship?  But if God had entrusted an orphan to you, would you thus neglect him?  He has delivered yourself to your own care, and says:  “I had no one fitter to entrust him to than yourself; keep him for me such as he is by nature, modest, faithful, erect, unterrified, free from passion and perturbation.”  And then you do not keep him such.

But some will say, Whence has this fellow got the arrogance which he displays and these supercilious looks?  I have not yet so much gravity as befits a philosopher; for I do not yet feel confidence in what I have learned and in what I have assented to.  I still fear my own weakness.  Let me get confidence and then you shall see a countenance such as I ought to have and an attitude such as I ought to have; then I will show to you the statue, when it is perfected, when it is polished.  What do you expect? a supercilious countenance?  Does the Zeus at Olympia lift up his brow?  No, his look is fixed as becomes him who is ready to say: 

  Irrevocable is my word and shall not fail.—­Iliad, i., 526.